A Place to Call Home
by Allen92909
Summary: One shot set after 11x11, Into the Mystic. Deans realizes that Sam has never really made the bunker home and then stumbles onto the box that Sam kept of his most prized possessions. He's surprised at what he finds and decides to confront Sam.


One shot that takes place after 11x11, Into the Mystic. I was inspired to write this after I saw Sam with his box of cherished belongings near the end of the episode. It takes place sometime after that episode, but before the next episode.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Supernatural

Hours and hours of driving was making Dean a little cranky. He couldn't wait to get back to the bunker and settle into his memory foam mattress and catch a few hours of zzz's. After their little hunt at the nursing home a mere 15 minutes from the bunker, they'd taken on a haunting nearly half way across the country. Turned out that some bastard was somehow anchoring the ghosts to the world of the living for his own sick purposes. They not only had to put the ghosts to rest, but stop the mad man too and he didn't go out easy. He'd fought the brothers, giving Sam a nice concussion and Dean some bruised ribs.

Once they settled back into the bunker, Dean had gone straight for the shower. He'd showered and fell into bed, quickly letting sleep pull him under. Sam had a bit more trouble getting to sleep. He tossed and turned and when he finally did fall asleep, it was anything but restless. That wasn't really new though. He'd been having nightmares since his time in the cage with Lucifer again.

When morning came, Dean stumbled into the kitchen muttering something about coffee. He went straight to the coffee pot, only to find it empty.

"Sorry, but we're all out." Sam said from his chair across the room where he was eating the last granola bar they had for breakfast.

Dean whipped around, surprised to see his brother up so early. "Damn, how am I supposed to function with out my coffee?" He asked rhetorically.

"We need a serious food run, this place is practically dry." Sam added.

"Well, then why don't you go to town and get some stuff?" Dean suggested.

"Why me?" Sam shot back. "I was planning on doing some more research on Amara and..."

Dean cut him off. "Hey, I was the one driving all day and night to get back here."

"I offered to drive." Sam replied.

"Yeah cause I was gonna let you drive after being concussed to the point of seeing double." Dean said and added with a smirk. "I couldn't risk you crashin' my baby."

Sam sighed. "Fine, I'll go out and get some stuff." He reluctantly gave in to Dean and held his hand out for the keys to the Impala.

Dean pulled the keys from his pocket, but didn't hand the over right away. "You're not still seeing double are you?" He asked.

"No, I'm not." Sam answered as Dean finally handed over the keys. "Good. Now where's that USB thingy you were using the other day, I'll continue researching Amara."

Sam had saved a bunch of research on a USB drive in case anything should happen to their laptop. He'd contracted some kind of virus on the thing a few weeks back after Dean visited a porn site again, something Sam had continually told not not to do. In Dean's defense, not that he'd told Sam, he'd been trying to get his mind off Amara. He thought watching a few sexy ladies misbehaving would help. It didn't though.

"I think it's on my dresser." Sam said. "I'll be back in an hour, two tops."

Dean watched Sam leave the kitchen and went to the fridge for a beer. If they didn't have coffee, he'd go for the next best thing. He popped the top, took a long swig, and headed down the hall to Sammy's room. When he reached the room, he opened the door slowly and took in the surroundings.

Sam's room was a drastic contrast from his own room. He relished in having his own room and made it his, decorating it with all his worldly possessions and the small stash of photos he had of his family. He'd even sprung for a fancy memory foam mattress, which 'remembered him.' Sam though, he hadn't done much with his room at all. He had a bed in the center with matching nightstands and lamps on either side. There was a desk and chair to the right and a dresser to the left. Sam's tablet sat on one of the nightstands and a bottle of water on the other. A few stacks of papers lined the desk along with an old clock. No pictures or paintings hung on the wall, no weapons hanging either. The room was freaky clean and lacking some serious personality.

He sighed when he saw the duffel bag in front of the dresser, not unpacked from their last trip. It seemed that Sam always had a bag ready. Dean had already unpacked his stuff. His bag and dirty laundry were in a heap on the floor, while any weapons he'd packed were already secured in either their weapons vault in the bunker or back in the impala's trunk.

His eyes roamed the top of the dresser, where not even a speck of dust rested. One or two lore books rested atop the dresser, but there was no USB drive. "Damn, where is that thing." He looked on the floor around the dresser, wondering if it had gotten knocked off at some point. There was nothing on the floor. Dean reached a hand to a drawer of the dresser and paused. "Sorry, Sammy." He said before opening it. The top right drawer had boxers and socks. He moved a few things around and didn't find what he was looking for. He closed that and went for the top left drawer. Maybe it was knocked into a drawer. He found a few t-shirts in that one, but when he went to move them around a bit, he noticed a box concealed under one of the shirts.

Dean pulled the shirt back and reached in for the box. It was a wood box that looked pretty warn. It had a metal latch, which Dean assumed at some point had been meant for a lock. He knew he shouldn't be poking around in his brothers personal belongings, but curiosity got the better of him as he took the box over to the bed and sat down.

Slowly, Dean opened the box. He was surprised at it's contents. "Oak Park Retirement Living." He pulled out the brochure from the retirement home they'd been to recently, where a Banshee had been killing residents. Now, why had his brother kept that? He set it aside and noticed an old box of playing cards. If memory served him correctly, it was one that their Dad had taught them to play poker with. Then, he spied a gold Zippo, dinged and warn with use over the years. Dean picked it up and rotated it around, his finger etching over the 'SW' engraving on it. He'd given it to Sam one year for his birthday after Sam's first salt and burn. He placed it back, noting the signed baseball in the box. He couldn't recall when Sam had gotten that.

There were exactly three photos in the box. One was of he and Sam when they were younger and more carefree, before the weight of the world had fallen on their shoulders time and time again. The second one was when Sam was a baby. He was nestled in their mother's arms as she posed with Dean in front of their house, the one she'd died in when Sammy was six months old. Dean fought back a few tears when he saw that one. It was the only picture they had of Sam with their Mom. Most of their photos had burned in the fire, though John had saved what he could. The last photo was one of Sam and Jess. It looked like it had been taken at a party. Sam and Jess were smiling and Dean could see the love in his brother's eyes.

Dean went to put the photos back, deciding he'd done enough snooping, but something stopped him. He froze when he saw a little glint of gold stand out from under a switchblade that Sam had in the box. He moved the blade and pulled out a gold amulet with a black leather chain looped through it. He swallowed hard as he held it in the palm of his shaky hand.

He remembered the day that Sam had given it to him. It was Christmas and their Dad was a no show, despite promising to be there. Sam had wrapped it up in news paper to give to their Dad, but had chosen to give it to Dean instead after he'd tried to make it a good Christmas for Sam despite not having John around or much money to buy gifts with. He also remembered the day he threw away the amulet. It was after they'd gone to heaven and relived some of their supposed happiest memories. Dean's were in fact, his happiest...times with his family and loved ones. Family was everything to him. Sam's memories were times in his life that included anything but family and that had been like a punch in the gut to Dean. Apparently, family hadn't meant to same to Sam. He tossed the amulet in a motel trashcan after their experience, not even bothering to listen to Sam's explanation or excuse in regards to the memories. Now that he thought back on that day, he remembered Sam making some excuse about leaving something in the motel room. Maybe it had been a ruse to rescue the amulet.

"Hey, Dean?" His head snapped up as he heard Sam yell across the bunker. He shoved everything back in the box and snapped it closed. "Dean?" He hurried to get it back in the dresser, before he grabbed his beer and headed in to the hallway to find Sam.

"Sammy?" Dean questioned, walking aimlessly through the bunker to find the younger Winchester.

"Hey..." Sam turned a corner, almost walking into him.

"Whoa..." Dean halted before they connected with one another. "That was a quick trip to the store."

"Yeah, well your _baby_ has a flat." Sam replied. "Looks like a nail in one of the tires."

"Sonofabitch!" Dean huffed, as he headed for the main entrance to the bunker so he could go out and check on his precious car.

"Look, I can change it, but I wasn't exactly sure where you stashed the spare tire." Sam said, following him. With the majority of their trunk turned into a sort of weapons vault, there wasn't exactly room in the trunk for a spare tire.

"It's in the bunkers garage." Dean answered, making his way outside. He saw his baby and noticed how the front passenger tire was lower than the rest. He moved closer to inspect the tire and saw the large nail sticking out of it. "Damn."

"I don't know if I ran it over on the way outta here or if it was something we ran over yesterday." Sam wasn't sure where the nail had come from. All he knew was that it would delay him getting his brother some much needed coffee and that meant his brother would be a little grumpier than usual. It was funny to him how Dean hadn't always been such a coffee junky. He'd thought only old people, and Sam, drank the stuff. As they both got older though, he caught Dean drinking a lot more coffee than beer.

"Yeah, I'll pull it inside the garage and we can change it in there." Dean said, moving around to the driver's side.

Once they had the car inside, he found the spare tire and rolled it over to Sam who was getting the car on a jack so they could remove the flat tire. They worked together quietly for some time until Sam was securing the last of the lug nuts that held the new tire in place.

"So, Sam..." Dean trailed off, not really sure how to bring up the amulet or the box of things he'd seen in his younger brother's room.

"Yeah Dean?" He eyed Dean curiously as he finished with the tire.

"How come...how come you never put anything in your room?" Dean asked. He figured he'd talk about Sam's room before he asked about the amulet.

Sam looked confused as he moved away from the car and lowered it from the jack. "Whadda ya mean?" He didn't understand the question. "I've got a bed and dresser and..."

Dean stopped him. "No, no. I mean, you don't have a lot of personal stuff in there."

Sam was even more confused. Why had Dean been so curious about his room all of a sudden. "What?"

"Well, when you walk into my room, you can tell it's mine. It has personality and..." Dean couldn't finish.

"Personality? Dean, what has gotten into you?" Sam shot back. "Why are you suddenly so interested in my room?"

"It's like you don't even live there." Dean replied.

"My clothes are in there, my..." Sam stopped for a moment, feeling a bit of anger boiling up inside him. "No, can we just not talk about this?" He turned to head back into the main part of the bunker.

"What, why don't you want to talk about it?" Dean asked, walking after his brooding brother.

Sam whipped around. Dean expected to see the anger, but he didn't expect to see the sadness in his features. "I know how excited you were to have your own room, to have a place to call home outside of the Impala, but I...I just..." Sam wasn't sure how to explain how he felt. "I was scared to make a home here, to get too comfortable here like you have."

"What? Why?" Dean didn't understand.

"Every home I've ever had was destroyed or taken from me." Sam started explaining. "Our childhood home burned to the ground, taking our mother with it. My apartment with Jess, the woman I thought I'd be spending the rest of my life with someday, was taken the same way and I'd lost her too. Then, we lost Bobby's place and not too long after that Bobby, who was more of a father to use than our own father was. Then we moved in here and you were all happy to have a home, but when you went all demonic on me, I thought it would just be a matter of time before I lost this place and then you. I guess the Impala's the only place I've really felt at home after losing so much."

"Oh Sammy..." Dean never realized that Sam might be scared to call a place home. Hell, they'd both considered the Impala their home for the majority of their childhood and most of their adulthood. That was why Dean had been so happy to finally have the bunker, to finally have his own room that he could do what he wanted with, because they'd spent so many years living out of that car.

"Don't...I know you aren't big on chick flick moments, ok." Sam put his hands up to stop him. "So can we just forget about this?"

"No, we can't just forget about it." Dean snapped. He rolled his eyes and tried to reel himself in a bit. "Look, I'm not going anywhere, not by choice anyways. It's you and me against the world and this..." He motioned his hand around, indicating the bunker. "This may not be the perfect place to call home, but it's all we got. Unless you wanna live in the car. And it's all ours. I'm not gonna let anyone take this from us."

"Dean..." Sam started.

"No, no, I'm not finished." He shot back. "This place is warded against any and every supernatural entity out there. Aint nothing getting in here and taking away what's ours."

Sam let out a faint smile. "You done now?" Somehow, Dean always knew what to say, not matter the occasion...when trying to piss him off, when trying to make him feel guilt, even when trying to make him feel better.

"Yeah, I mean no..." Dean said, confusing Sam again. "When were you gonna tell me about the amulet?"

Sam tensed immediately, his face scrunching in curiosity. "How do you know about that? Were you going through my stuff?" He asked.

"Not specifically." Dean answered. "I was looking for that USB thingy and it wasn't on your dresser..."

"So you thought you'd go through my dresser?" Sam's anger was flaring up again.

"Well, I..." Dean wasn't sure what to say. "I didn't mean to, I just got curious when I found that damn box." Before Sam could retort he added. "Were you ever gonna give it back to me?"

Sam sighed, trying to notch his anger down. "I, uh..." He couldn't even look Dean in the eyes. "I didn't think you'd ever want it back."

"Why would you think that?" Dean asked.

Sam raised his eyebrows and sighed, as if Dean should have already known why. "You were pretty upset when you tossed that thing out. You wouldn't even let me explain to you how wrong and twisted my version of heaven was and..."

"What do you mean?" How was his heaven so wrong and twisted, Dean wondered.

"Yeah, some of those memories were good ones, but those aren't my best ones." He admitted to Dean. He was certain the angels had twisted around his version of heaven to try and further the rift between the two of them. It wouldn't have been the first or the last time the angels had manipulated things the way they wanted. "When I was younger, I remember getting really sick. My fever was so high I probably should have been in a hospital. Dad told me to suck it up and be a man before he left for some hunt in Tulsa. You, you took care of me the whole time he was gone. You sold one of his favorite knives at a pawn shop to get money for drugs at some pharmacy near our motel and you made me my favorite soup. We spent the whole time watching reruns of the Dukes of Hazard."

"I remember that." Dean replied and smirked. "You used to have a thing for Daisy Duke."

"Yeah and you used to have a thing for the General Lee." Sam said. "That was the moment I realized that you would always be there for me, that you'd take care of me no matter what. Then, there was that weekend at Bobby's when we were teenagers. He was supposed to be helping us work on our latin."

"Yeah and we ended up watching a Die Hard marathon." Dean remembered.

Sam let out a small smile. "Bobby was all too happy to let us be regular kids for the weekend, though I don't think he was all that happy about our popcorn fight."

"Well he sure wasn't happy when you nailed me in the eye with a kernel." Dean added. "That hurt like hell."

Sam chuckled. "Yeah, sorry about that."

"No you're not." Dean shot back, giving him a not so serious glare.

"Anyways, most of my favorite memories have you in them, except for this one with Jess and well..." He trailed off, not wanting to get into details. It was an intimate moment between the two of them on the beach. It had been late at night with the moon hanging low and bright, reflecting off the waves of the ocean. It was the night they fell in love and the first time they made love.

"So the angels screwed with your memories?" Dean asked, trying to understand a little better.

"I guess." Sam replied.

"But that doesn't explain why you never gave back the amulet." Dean said.

Sam took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly before explaining. "After that day in heaven, I figured we'd never get back to what we had before...before the apocalypse, before Ruby and Hell. I figured, I'd burned all my bridges with you and over the years after that, I only managed to mess things up between us even more."

"Sam..." Dean tried to stop him. They'd been over all that stuff before...how Sam chose a demon over him, how he became addicted to demon blood and helped free Lucifer from the cage, how he'd given up hunting after they killed Dick Roman and Dean was lost to purgatory...and it was all in the past.

"No, Dean." Sam hadn't finished what he had to say. "I screwed up our relationship. I did all those terrible things that put a strain on what we had. I broke your trust time and time again and..."

"And I forgive you." Dean shot in.

"What?" Sam was shocked at his words.

"I'm not gonna say that some of those things didn't anger me or affect our relationship, because they did, but it's all in the past and some of it you had no control over. It's done now and we have to move on from it, you have to move on from it. I have." Dean explained.

"You have?" Sam asked.

"Yeah I have." He replied . "We're a team, Sammy. We're the best team there is and there's no one else I'd rather be hunting with. Remember that good ole family business?"

Sam shook his head at his brother, fighting a chuckle that was trying to escape. "Yeah, the family business...saving people, hunting things."

"Exactly!" Dean said. "Now, let's go get us some damn coffee."

With that said, they both walked back to the Impala and headed to the local grocery store. Dean got his favorite coffee and they filled up a cart full of other food and necessities. Dean couldn't help but notice a small shelve with nick knacks on it for sale. On it was a little ceramic moose wearing a green scarf and matching mittens. He smiled and put it in the cart.

As Sam emptied the cart onto the conveyor belt at the register he eyed the moose. "What's this?" He asked Dean.

"Oh, that's for your room." He answered, giving his brother a grin. "You know, to make it feel more like home."

"Really, a moose?" He wasn't all too fond of anything moose related, but only because Moose had been Crowley's nickname for him.

"What? I suits you." He said with a laugh.

Sam sighed and set it with the rest of their groceries. "If I ever find a squirrel, it's so yours." He mumbled. They paid for everything and headed back to the bunker where Dean worked his magic on a couple of paninis for the two of them for dinner. Apparently, he'd found a panini maker at a garage sale and he'd been making them ever since.

That night, Dean made his way to his bedroom. He flipped the lamp on near his bed and pulled the covers back. He almost missed the object on his pillow as he went to climb in under them. He smiled as he took it in his hand, his finger tracing over it. Sam popped his head in the doorway, just as Dean slipped it over his head, letting it rest on his chest where it belonged.

Sam smiled, seeing the amulet back where it belonged around his brother's neck. "Thanks for the sandwiches." He said.

Dean faked anger. "They're paninis, Bitch." He couldn't help but notice the moose in his brother's hand.

"Yeah, whatever Jerk." Sam said before walking off. "Night."

"Night, Sammy." Dean replied. His hand rested on the amulet for a moment as he whispered. "Thanks for the amulet back."

Sam walked to his room a few doors down from Dean's. He stepped inside and decided it was time to make a few changes. He set the moose on the dresser. He reached into the dresser for his box, where he pulled out the three lone pictures he had in it. He fumbled at his desk for some tape and secured each picture on the wall above the desk. He sat and stared for a moment, taking in the look on his mothers face as she held him in the one photo. Dean stood next to her looking so proud to be a big brother. Jess, oh, how she was so beautiful. He missed her so much and wished he could tell her just one more time how much he'd loved her. He couldn't remember where the photo of he and Dean had been taken, but he would always cherish his brother. Looking at the photos, at the moose...it wasn't much, but it was a start. He was finally making a home there. He smiled and laid back in his bed, fighting to wiggle his way under the blankets before he flipped off the bedside lamp and had the best sleep he's had in a long time. No dreams or nightmares, no tossing and turning, no restless mind...just pure and perfect sleep under the roof of his new home.

 **Author's Note-**

I watched that episode several times, surveying exactly what was in Sam's box and so badly wished the amulet had been inside. I also noticed how we've seen Dean decorate his room and really make himself at home there, but not so much Sam. So, I wanted to remedy that a bit and this is what came out. I'd love to see your thoughts. Thanks.

 **PS-** I apologize for any typing errors. I wrote this all out in an afternoon and sometimes my own proofreading misses stuff.


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